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Comment by erdos4d | Hacker News Reader

My favorite bad design is the bathroom light switch in northern Europe. Most are located in the hall outside the bathroom, because why should the person in the bathroom control the light in the bathroom, right? I've asked a lot of Scandinavians about this and whether that makes any sense, and I always get a sheepish "Well, perhaps not...".

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It's to prevent people with wet hands from electrocuting themselves. In the UK it's required by law (building regulations BS 7671), that electrical switches have to be either outside the bathroom or specially water-protected.

How realistic of a threat is that? I've never heard of that occurring in the US where there's a light switch in most bathrooms--and if the news could make fear out of it they would.

Depends on the size of the bathroom (at least in Canada) - you must not be able to reach the switch and the water source at the same time. Or use a GFCI protected switch.

Probably just a very old regulation, from a time when that was an actual serious risk, that's stuck around out of old habit.

This is also really common in New England in the US. I have no idea why, though.

The house I grew up in had a switch like that on just one of the bathrooms, the tiny one. From everything I have been able to gather, it had to do with electrical codes and requirements that switches had to be a certain distance from water.

Take that with a grain of salt because this bathroom also had the light fixture over the sink with a socket for a razor or hair dryer plug, and it seems way more hazardous to me.

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